An Italian journalist who was detained in Iran has said she assumed she would have been held much longer, and said her boyfriend’s contact with Elon Musk might have been “fundamental” to her release.
In her first televised interview since her release on January 8, Cecilia Sala referred to the three-nation negotiation that resulted in her freedom after 21 days in detention.
Ms Sala, 29, was arrested in Tehran just days after Italy detained an Iranian national, Mohammad Abedini, on a US warrant, and their fates became intertwined.
After three weeks of negotiations that Premier Giorgia Meloni called “diplomatic triangulation”, Ms Sala went home and Mr Abedini returned to Iran.
The journalist with the Chora Media podcast platform and Il Foglio daily said her boyfriend Daniele Ranieri had contacted Mr Musk’s Italy representative, Andrea Stroppa, after noting a report that the Tesla and SpaceX chief had met with Iran’s UN ambassador, suggesting he had contacts with Tehran.
The United States and Iran do not have diplomatic relations.
“The only response Daniele got from Andrea Stroppa was ‘he is informed’.”
After Ms Sala was released, Mr Musk tweeted that he played a “small role” in her liberation.
But referring to a New York Times story about his role, Mr Musk said he “did not have any interaction with Iran. Just recommended support from the US side”.
While the negotiations were under way, Ms Meloni flew to Mar-a-Lago and met with Trump.
Mr Stroppa has since tweeted a photoshopped image of Mr Musk eating a plate of pasta, a reference to a reported promise by Ms Sala’s mother to cook Mr Musk his favourite pasta the next time he is in Italy, to thank him for his intervention.
Ms Sala, deprived of news from the outside world, assumed she would have been held for much longer, given other Western prisoners have been held for over a year or more.
She said she also feared Mr Trump’s arrival in the White House could have meant a much longer detention, because of regional tensions between Israel and Iran.
“If Donald Trump had come out in the press saying publicly that he wanted particular retaliation against some Iranians, my situation could have been very complicated,” she said.
“I was sure that I would be inside a lot more, because everybody else has been inside a lot more.”
Kept in solitary confinement without her glasses or contact lenses that she needs to see, Sala said she was interrogated while hooded, for up to 10 hours a day, by someone speaking “perfect English” and who knew a lot about Italy. She was denied an English-language Koran that she requested and said she felt reality slipping away.
“There were these neon lights on for 24 hours a day. You lose faith in your head when you don’t talk for days. You don’t trust your memory and even responding to your interrogators becomes a pretty heavy psychological game,” she said.
Now free, she said she has moments of euphoria tinged with bouts of anxiety “that I’ll learn how to manage”.
